Treasure Hunters: Danger Down the Nile Page 12

After screaming for maybe thirty straight seconds, Merck continued his little speech.

  “But voilà! I have finally defeated you, you foolish children!”

  Beck and I exchanged a look: Seriously? He thinks he defeated us?

  “King Solomon’s Mines are mine!” Merck, who maybe had a touch of dengue fever, laughed uncontrollably for a few seconds, muttering, “The mines are mine! Mines, mine, mines. Mine, mines, mine.”

  While he did his drooling happy dance, Storm stepped forward.

  “You are right, Monsieur Merck,” she said in a stilted voice. “Your street smarts are far superior to our book smarts. The treasure of King Solomon’s Mines belongs to you!”

  Merck was delirious with joy (and maybe a few snake bites). “Oui, mes amis!” And he started giggling that “mines, mine, mines” ditty again.

  “Storm?” said Tommy. “After all that we foolish children have been through, here in the jungle”—

  Yes, Tommy’s acting is a little stiff sometimes, too.

  —“you would just give Guy Dubonnet Merck the sixty trillion dollars’ worth of diamonds buried inside the treasure pit barely five miles up the road from where we are standing right now?”

  “Yes, Tommy,” said Storm. “He wins. We lose. It’s time for the Kidd Family Treasure Hunters Inc. business to close up shop.”

  CHAPTER 71

  Okay. As you probably remember, neither Beck nor I was in on Storm and Tommy’s big secret plan.

  But, judging from their bad acting, and how eager they were to let Guy Dubonnet Merck have all the treasure hidden in King Solomon’s Mines, we had to figure that this was all part of some crafty scheme.

  “I need a new map!” said Merck. “A chimp swallowed the one I stole out of your hotel room in Cairo!”

  “Fine,” said Storm. “I’ll draw you a new one.”

  “Sacre bleu! You will draw it? How?”

  “My sister has a photographic memory,” said Tommy. “But, before she scribbles a single line, we need to make a deal.”

  “What sort of deal?” said Merck, hiking up what was left of his pants.

  “We give you the map. You let us go.”

  Merck sniggered. “Of course I will let you go! Go back the way you came. See if you make it out alive.”

  “You promise you won’t come after us with your, uh, stick?”

  “I give you my word.”

  “All right, then. Sis, draw him a map.”

  And Storm did.

  “That path up there, cutting through the jungle, was once known as Solomon’s Road. Follow it for about five miles until you see the ruins of the idols. Go down into the pit and you’ll see the mouth of the mines.”

  “Merci, mademoiselle. Au revoir, foolish children! My treasure awaits!”

  Merck hobbled up the trail.

  At the pace he was traveling, it would probably take him five days to travel the five miles.

  “Okay, you two,” said Beck, when Merck was finally gone. “Why, exactly, are we letting Merck have our treasure?”

  “Because,” said Storm, “there is no treasure anywhere near here.”

  “What?”

  “There is no Kukuanaland. No diamond-filled mines.”

  “But the map…”

  “It came out of that paperback novel Dad stashed in the safe-deposit box,” said Tommy, pulling out his satellite phone and quickly punching a series of buttons.

  “If Merck the Jerk had ever read a book,” said Storm, “like, oh, maybe, King Solomon’s Mines by Sir H. Rider Haggard, he’d know that everything on that treasure map came straight out of a work of fiction.”

  “Wait a second,” I said. “So why did we follow the same map? Why’d we risk our lives with trench foot and man-eating crocodiles and mud slides and mosquitoes and crazed chimps if you guys knew the map was a phony?”

  “Easy,” said Storm. “To prove to Merck that it wasn’t.”

  “It’s also why we made no secret about where we were headed,” said Tommy. “Why Storm kept blabbing, ‘We’re going to King Solomon’s Mines’ to everybody we met like it was a trip to Disney World.”

  Suddenly we heard the throb of helicopter blades overhead.

  “It’s our extraction package,” said Tommy. “Remember, Dumaka and I set this up back in Cairo?”

  The chopper landed in our clearing. Dad’s friend Dumaka was in the pilot’s seat.

  We grabbed our personal gear and loaded up.

  “Greetings, Kidd family,” Dumaka shouted over the roar of the rotor wash. “Are you ready to say good-bye to the jungle?”

  “I was ready a week ago!” shouted Beck.

  We lifted off.

  The instant we cleared the treetops of the jungle canopy, Storm and Tommy slapped high fives.

  “Um, you guys?” I asked. “Where exactly are we going now?”

  “The coast of Kenya,” replied Tommy. “Now that we’re totally and completely rid of Merck, we need to start our real treasure hunt! The one that’ll set Mom free!”

  CHAPTER 72

  The one-hour helicopter flight out of the jungle back to the village where we had parked our Safari Extreme Global Expedition Vehicle was very enlightening.

  Storm and Tommy had finally explained their supersecret plan to Beck and me. We were all hooked up with aviation headsets so we could communicate over the noise of the chopper’s thumping blades.

  “Remember that slip of paper I found hidden inside Mom’s dive watch?” said Storm. “It was a message written in code.”

  Working totally from memory, Storm re-created Mom’s coded message on a small whiteboard stowed in the helicopter’s passenger area:

  Zl fzneg naq jbaqreshy puvyqera! Zl pncgbef urer va Plcehf ner jvyyvat gb frg zr serr vs lbh oevat gurz n Zvat Qlanfgl infr gb tb jvgu gur Terpvna hea gurl npdhverq sebz lbhe svefg nqiragher. Tb gb jurer lbhe qnq gbyq lbh gb ybbx va Nsevpn! Ohg or pnershy. Bguref jvyy gel gb fgbc lbh sebz frggvat zr serr.

  “I, of course, immediately recognized it for what it was,” Storm continued. “And promptly destroyed the evidence.”

  “You mean you swallowed it,” said Beck.

  Storm shrugged. “Whatever.”

  “Go on,” I said. “How’d you crack the code?”

  “Easy,” said Tommy. “Storm just did what Mom told her to do.”

  “Huh?”

  “Caesar,” said Storm. “Thirteen.”

  “Oh-kay,” said Beck. “And what exactly is that supposed to mean?”

  “Yeah,” I added. “That’s been bugging me ever since Mom said it.”

  “Simple,” said Storm, because so many extremely complicated things are ridiculously easy for her genius brain to decipher. “In cryptography—”

  “That’s the study of codes!” said Tommy, who apparently went over all this stuff with Storm back in Cairo.

  “Exactly,” said Storm. “In cryptography, a Caesar cipher is one of the simplest and most widely known encryption techniques. It’s named after Julius Caesar, who used it to keep his private correspondence private.”

  “And what exactly is a ‘Caesar cipher’?” asked Beck.

  “A substitution code where each letter in the message is replaced by a letter some fixed number of positions down the alphabet.”

  “Thirteen!” I said.

  “So,” said Beck, “you knew to substitute every letter in that jumble with one that was thirteen letters down in the alphabet.”

  Storm nodded and quickly erased the whiteboard so she could jot down Mom’s translated message, reading it aloud to make doubly sure Beck and I understood:

  My smart and wonderful children! My captors here in Cyprus are willing to set me free if you bring them a Ming Dynasty vase to go with the Grecian urn they acquired from your first adventure. Go to where your dad told you to look in Africa! But be careful. Others will try to stop you from setting me free.

  Others.

  I couldn’t help but notice that Mom had used the plural. That meant somebody b
esides Merck might be trying to stop us from setting her free.

  Who could it be? Nathan Collier? Strange Uncle Timothy? Even stranger Aunt Bela Kilgore?

  I hated to admit it, but it was probably smart of Tommy and Storm not to tell Beck and me about this big fake-out. If we had known it was all just a clever ploy to lead the bad guys in the wrong direction, we might not have done such a convincing job faking everybody out. I would have definitely bailed when my foot turned green.

  Our big brother and sister knew we had to make absolutely, doubly certain that whoever was trying to stop us from setting Mom free 100 percent seriously thought we were slogging our way through the jungle to find King Solomon’s Mines—even though that particular treasure never actually existed.

  It was just a work of fiction, straight out of a classic book.

  Fortunately for us, a lot of bad guys are too dumb to read!

  CHAPTER 73

  “Woo-hoo!” I shouted into my headset. “Way to go, Storm!”

  I slapped her a high five.

  Tommy held up his palm. “Don’t leave me hanging, bro.” So I slapped him five, too.

  “Whoa,” said Beck. “Hang on a second. Dad told us four different places to ‘look in Africa.’ We’ve already scratched King Solomon’s Mines off the list. But how are we supposed to figure out which one of the other three has this Ming Dynasty vase Mom’s kidnappers want so badly?”

  “That one’s actually easy,” said Tommy. “There was only one treasure map in the safe-deposit box with the word ‘Ming’ in its title.”

  “The Ming Dynasty Artifacts from Zheng He’s Treasure Fleet,” I mumbled.

  Tommy reached over and tousled my hair the way Dad used to when I said something smart. “Way to go, bro. You’re two for two from the floor.”

  “The shipwreck off the coast of Kenya,” said Beck, getting more excited. “We’re going deep-sea diving again?”

  “We sure are,” said Tommy.

  “Speak for yourself,” muttered Storm.

  “We’ll drive the expedition vehicle down to the Lusaka airport,” Tommy went on. “In Lusaka, we’ll load the truck into a cargo plane that Dumaka arranged for us.”

  “The transport will fly us up to Nairobi,” Tommy continued. “And then—”

  Now Tommy’s eyes darted around suspiciously, like he half expected Guy Dubonnet Merck or, worse, Nathan Collier to be hiding in the helicopter, listening to everything he said so they could beat us to the real treasure.

  “Then we’ll drive to the coast,” Tommy whispered into his mouthpiece. “To the spot where, you know, we’re supposed to go.”

  Tommy tapped his chest pocket. I’m guessing that was where he had Dad’s map to the Chinese treasure ship’s wreckage site.

  “We’ll need a boat,” said Beck, shifting into family quartermaster mode. “Scuba gear, salvage equipment, enough food and potable water for a week at least…”

  “All of which,” said Tommy, “we can buy with the crown jewels of Russia money we deposited in the Kidd Family Treasure Hunters Inc. unofficial Swiss bank account. So rest up, everybody. Once we land at the village and pick up our safari truck, we’re going to be very, very busy.”

  Everybody else eased back into their seats. Storm, Beck, and Tommy were all smiling like we’d already found the sunken Chinese treasure vessel, retrieved a Ming vase, and hauled it up to Cyprus to ransom Mom.

  Two seconds later they all had their eyes shut and were grabbing a quick catnap.

  Me? I was still worried.

  We knew Nathan Collier was lurking somewhere in Africa. Uncle Timothy told us about Collier’s submarine docking in the Kenyan port city of Mombasa.

  So why hadn’t we run into the scuzzy sleazeball yet?

  CHAPTER 74

  Our freshly washed safari vehicle sat gleaming in the sun outside the thatched hut where we’d stashed it.

  Tommy tipped the locals who had guarded our supertruck. Beck and I checked out the cabinets and secret compartments.

  “We’ve got Twinkies!” I announced. “Ding Dongs and Ho Hos, too.”

  “Excellent,” said Beck. “We might need the ammunition if we run into any more pirates on the ride down to Lusaka.”

  “Do not worry,” said Dumaka. “I will be traveling with you. There will be no more problem with pirates.”

  The way Dumaka said it, I believed him.

  With Tommy at the wheel and Dumaka riding shotgun, we headed for Lusaka.

  “So tell me, Kidds,” said Dumaka as we rolled down the Great North Road, “where will your journey take you next?”

  “Where Mom and Dad need us to go,” said Storm.

  “I see. And where is that?”

  “Sorry,” said Storm. “That information is classified.”

  Dumaka looked sort of hurt. “Really? After all I have done for you and your family?”

  “Sorry, dude,” said Tommy.

  “We have another treasure map,” blurted Beck, who, like me, couldn’t stand to see the sad expression on Dumaka’s face.

  “Indeed?” he said. “Might I take a look at this new treasure map?”

  “No,” we all said at the same time. “Sorry.”

  “But I might be able to help you navigate the most expeditious route to your final destination.”

  “I’m really sorry,” said Beck. “It’s not gonna happen. Just drop it.”

  Dumaka held up both hands in surrender. “As you wish, children of my good friend Dr. Thomas Kidd. As you wish.”

  That was when something started buzzing and rattling around inside the truck’s center console.

  Beck gasped. “Another snake!”

  CHAPTER 75

  “Relax,” Tommy said with a chuckle. “That’s just my iPhone. Forgot I stashed it in there to recharge when we took off through the jungle.”

  Beck opened up the console’s lid and jabbed the buzzing phone’s speaker button.

  “This is Tommy Kidd’s iPhone,” she said. “Who may I say is calling?”

  “Is Tommy there?” gushed a female voice.

  “This is Tommy,” Tommy said, his eyes fixed on the road.

  “Ohmigod! I’ve been calling you for days.”

  “Sorry. Been kind of busy. Working on another adventure.”

  “But where are you?”

  “Driving. Um, sorry to ask, but—who is this?”

  “What? Don’t you recognize my voice? It’s me. Gina.”

  Tommy had a pained look on his face like he was trying to remember which of his many lady friends was named Gina.

  She helped out: “The redhead?”

  “Riiiight,” Tommy said very suavely and smoothly. “Gina. How you doin’?”

  “Thomas?” said Storm.

  “Yeah?”

  “Isn’t Gina the girl in the bikini who works for Nathan Collier?”

  “Nuh-uh,” said Gina, who must’ve heard Storm. “Not anymore. Did you know he styles his hair with car wax? That’s why it’s always so shiny.”

  Tommy and Gina chatted some more, until their conversation eventually devolved into kissyface noises.

  I thought I was going to hurl.

  Fortunately, Tommy and Girlfriend No. 496 said “buh-bye” (like a hundred times) when we pulled into the Lusaka airport.

  “Gotta run,” said Tommy, piloting our vehicle up the ramp into another wide-bodied cargo plane.

  “Where are you?” asked Gina.

  “Um, at the airport.”

  “Where are you going, Tommy? I miss you.”

  “Wherever the next treasure map leads. Catch you later, Gina. And next time you see me, you’ll get to meet my mom!”

  Okay, that made me smile. If this hunt for an antique Ming vase off the coast of Kenya was successful, pretty soon we’d be bringing home one of the real treasures we were seeking: Mom!

  CHAPTER 76

  We said good-bye to our father’s friend Dumaka a few hours later, when we landed at Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Ai
rport.

  “You children are certain you do not wish me to continue with you on this new and possibly dangerous adventure?” he asked when our truck was off-loaded from the cargo transport.

  “Yes,” Storm said bluntly, once again (not) demonstrating her total command of people skills.

  Tommy tried to soften the blow. “Sorry, D. We just, you know, do better when we keep things in the family.”

  “Of course,” said Dumaka. “I understand. Your father always told me, ‘family first.’ However, because of my, shall we say, ‘connections,’ I have access to another high-tech helicopter, here in Kenya.…”

  “We’d rather drive,” said Storm.

  “Look,” Tommy said to Dumaka, “if we change our minds, we’ll give you a call. Okay?”

  Dumaka nodded. “Very well. I will be spending some time here in Nairobi with my family—my other brother, Joseph. You know how to reach me should your circumstances change?”

  “Chyah,” said Tommy. “You’ll always be speed dial number one on my satellite phone.”

  They shook hands.

  “Until we meet again, Thomas Kidd.”

  “Later, dude.”

  We climbed into our suped-up expedition vehicle and drove away from Nairobi into the African bush.

  “It’s three hundred and seven miles to the Kenyan coast,” said Storm, who would act as our GPS navigator for this leg of the journey. “We’ll definitely see more wildlife. Our route cuts through the Ngai Ndethya National Reserve.”

  Which, of course, is exactly the spot (in the middle of nowhere) where we had a flat tire.

  And almost lost our lives fixing it.

  (Okay, Beck is telling me to skip this part about how we were attacked by wild boars. She says it’s just another close encounter of the animal kind and you’ll find it very “boaring.” Cute, Beck. Cute.)